Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Sunday, March 19 starting at 5am trucks from Ocean Cement started appearing in the 1400 block of both Granville Street & Howe. About 400 truckloads arrived that day to pour 4000 cubic meters onto the prepared ground for Vancouver House. This is the base of the 52 floors above ground & 7 below.This is how things looked on the day before this historic 'pour', the biggest in Vancouver's history. The historic crew too!

I got out to the Bridge at 8am. There were concrete trucks on Howe, Beach, & Granville.

There were two trucks feeding into each concrete pump.

It was pretty amazing. There were lots of people out on the bridge with me, including a top person with Dialog, the architectural firm here working with Bjarke Ingels, the Danish architect for Vancouver House. Some of the site supervisors were out there-- a safety man, and a man from Carion Construction. I'd talked to him before.

Conferring, watching, working, & there for the event.

The work is really strenuous. Someone from above manipulates where the pump hose is, but sometimes some one has to handle it.

They also prepared one rectangular area for a small platform (left).

When I came back at 4 pm you could actually see that the job was nearly done.

This was the detail man. He did all the edges, tight places, & erased his own tracks as he receded.

Pretty near the end. I left at about 5pm.

The next day there were new things to do. The place looked totally different with white plastic!

Gravel was being poured in from Howe to level another patch of ground for a lesser pouring of the north end. A little front loader was buzzing around moving it to flatness.

I couldn't figure these guys out.

Then there were a lower layer of the stabilization pipes that were removed.

They will all be stored off the east side of Granville Street.

A man on the bridge told me that every 3 weeks another floor will be added to Vancouver House. Soon another part of the site will be excavated for the stage two building. I am torn about all this. I still see signs of sadness, messiness & struggle around the block.